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families: 1st, the Cheraite* (Chersians, or Land-Tortoises) ; 2nd, the 

 Klodiu< Elodiana, or Marah-Tortoisas) ; 3rd, the Potamites ( PoUuiiianx, 

 or River-Tortoise*) ; 4th, the Thalassitos (Thalassians, Sea-Tortoises, or 

 Turtle.). 



Of the*, group* the authors observe that Chemites is not perfectly 

 limited, for some of the species arranged by them under the succeed- 

 ing family (Klodites) seem to form a natural passage between the 

 Land- and Marsh - Tortoise*. Such are Oat ado Carolina and Kmyt 

 ifuUatbmrgii, which are iu reality Paludines, or Marsh-Tortoises, with 

 distinct' toes, though they possess only very short membranes and but 

 lightly palmated feet 



The principal characters which distinguish the Chersites, or Cher- 

 sians, from the three other divisions of the order Cltdonia are thus 

 defined : Body short, oval, convex, covered with a carapace and a 

 plastron ; four feet ; no teeth. But Messrs. Dumonl aud Bibron remark 

 that the principal distinction may be enunciated by this simple term 

 drawn from the conformation of the limbs, and which indicates per- 

 fectly the manner of life of the group stumpy feet (des pattes en 

 moignon) : this would recall the condition of those feet, namely, 

 that they are short, unshapely, though nearly of equal length, with 

 toes but little distinct, nearly equal, immoveable, united by a thick 

 akin, and conglomerated into a sort of truncated mass, callous in its 

 periphery, on the outside of which one only distinguishes horny cases, 

 a sort of hoofs which for the most part correspond with the last 

 phalanges they incase, and would consequently show that these 

 animals live only on the land, never in the water. The other three 

 groups differ from the last and from each other iu the form of 

 the feet 



The Thalassites, or Thalassians, have the carapace very much 

 depressed, and their two pairs of feet, unequal in length, are flattened 

 into the form of oars or solid fins, because their toes are always con- 

 joined and hardly distinct from each other, incased as they are in 

 these paddles. 



The Elodites, or Klodiaus, have the toes separate, or rather sepa- 

 rately moveable, furnished with crooked claws, most frequently 

 palmated or united at their base by membranes, as in the Duck Tribe 

 among birds ; but the transition of these last three families is, so to 

 peak, insensible on the one side between the species of the genus 

 Cittudo, and on the other between Chdyt and all the species generally 

 known as Soft Tortoises. 



These last, the Potamites, or Potamians, have also the toes palmated 

 or connected by membranes ; they have pointed claws, three in number 

 only, on each foot ; their pointed and trenchant beak is constantly 

 furnished externally with folds of the skin, like lips, appendages 

 which have hitherto been only observed in this family. In addition 

 their bony carapace is covered with a coriaceous skin, the edges of 

 which in the greater number remain flexible and floating on the sides 

 of the body. 



Family 1. Chersians Loud-Tortoises. 



(ii-nrra. 



CTMoveable behind, where it is, as it were, articulated 4, Kinixyt. 

 \ Immoveable ; f four only . . . . .2, llumopus. 

 Jl nails on the < five, front of f moveable . . 3, Py.cis. 

 \_ anterior feet |_ the plastron \ immoveable . . 1, Tatudo. 



Tatudo. Feet with five toes, hind-feet with four nails only ; cara 

 pace of a single piece ; sternum not moveable anteriorly. 



This genus is divided by Messrs. Dume'ril and Bibron into three sec- 

 tions or sub-genera : 



1. Those species which have the posterior portion of their plastron 

 moveable. These correspond with the genera Cheniu of Wagler 

 Tatudo of authors; Ckertina of Gray. 



2. Those species whose plastron is solid in all its parts, or of a single 

 piece covered with twelve plates. 



3. Those species which have the sternum equally immoveable, but 

 covered with eleven horny plates. 



These sections embrace twenty-two species. 



In the first section Tatudo marginata, Schuepf., and T. 

 Dum. and Bibr., are placed. 



In the second are Tatudo Gracn, I. inn. ; T. </ iimrtricn, Linn. ; 7' 

 actinoda, Bell ; T. pardalu, Bell ; T. tulcata, Miller ; T. nigrita, Dum 

 and Bibr. ; T. radiata, Shaw ; T. tabulata, Walbanm ; T. carbonaria 

 Spix ; T. polyphemut, Daud. ; T. Sdueeiggeri, Gray ; T. cltphaniina 

 Dum. and Bibr. ; T. nvjra, Quoy and Gaim. ; T. giganten, Schweigg. 

 T. Daudinii, Dum. and Bibr. ; T. Perraultii, Dum. and Bibr. 



In the third are T. anyulaia, Dum. and Bibr. ; '/'. Graii, Dum. an, 

 Bibr. ; T. pdtatta, Dum. and Kibr. ; and T. Votauuri, Fitzing. 



For an account of the habits xf Land-Tortoises we turn to the 

 records of two acute and eloquent observers, whose narratives it woul 

 be unjust to give in other words than their own. 



White of Selborne thus writes to the Honourable Daines Barring 

 ton, in April, 1772 : " While I was in Sussex hut autumn, my resi 

 dence was at the village near Lewes, whence I had formerly th 

 pleasure of writing to you. On the 1st of November I remarked tba 

 the old tortoise formerly mentioned began first to dig the ground ii 

 to the forming its hybernaculum, which it had fixed on jus 



beside a great tuft of hepaticas. It scrapes out the ground with it 

 eet, and throws it up over its back with iU hind f 



fora feet, 



feet ; but th 



motion of its legs is ridiculously slow, little exceeding the hour-hand 

 f a clock. . . . Nothing can be more assiduous than this creature 

 night and day in scooping the earth and forcing it* great body into 

 be cavity ; but as the noons of that season proved unusually warm 

 and sunny, it was continually interrupted, ami called forth by the 

 teat iu the middle of the day; and though I continue.) there till 

 he 18th of November, yet the work remained unfinished. Harsher 

 weather and frosty mornings would have quickened its opera 

 i'n part of its behaviour ever struck me more than the extreme 

 imiility it always expresses with regard to rain ; and though it has 

 a shell thiit mold secure it against a loaded cart, yet does it discover 

 LI much solicitude about rain as a lady dressed in all her best attire, 

 burning away on the first sprinklings, and running its head up in a 

 uriirr. If attended to, it beuomea an excellent weather-glass ; for as 

 ure as it walks elate, aud as it were on tiptoe, feeding with great 

 earnestness in the morning, so sure will it rain before night It is 

 otally a diurnal animal, and never pretends to stir after it becomes 

 lark. The tortoise, like other reptiles, has an arbitrary stomach as 

 well as lungs, and can refrain from eating as well as breathing for a 

 great part of the year. When first awakened it eats nothing ; nr 

 again in the autumn before it retires : through the height of the 

 summer it feeds voraciously, devouring all the food that comes in its 

 way. I was much taken with its sagacity in discerning those that do 

 t kind offices ; for as soon as the good old lady comes in sight v. In 

 las waited on it for more than thirty years, it hobbles towards its 

 >enefactress with awkward alacrity, but remains inattentive to 

 strangers. Thus, not only ' the ox knoweth his owner, and the an 

 lis master's crib,' but the most abject reptile and torpid of beings 

 distinguishes the hand that feeds it, and is touched with the feelings 

 of gratitude." In a postscript he adds, that iu about three days 

 after he left Sussex the tortoise retired into the ground under the 

 lepaticas. 



In April, 1780, White again writes to Mr. Harrington : -" Tin- .'1.1 

 ;ortoise that I have so often mentioned to you is become my property. 

 '. dug it out of its winter dormitory in March last, when it was enough 

 awakened to express its resentment by hissing ; and, packing it in a 

 >ox with earth, carried it eighty miles in post-chaises. Tin- rattle. 

 and hurry of the journey so perfectly roused it, that when I turned it 

 out on a border, it walked twice down to the bottom of my garden ; 

 lowever, in the evening, the weather being cold, it buried itself in 

 the loose mould, and continues still concealed. As it will be under 

 my eye, I shall now have an opportunity of enlarging my observations 

 on its mode of life and propensities, and perceive already that, towards 

 the time of coming forth, it opens a breathing-place in the ground 

 near it* head, requiring, I conclude, a freer respiration as it becomes 

 more alive. This creature not only goes under the earth from tin- 

 middle of November to the middle of April, but sleeps great part of 

 the summer ; for it goes to bed in the longest days at four in the 

 afternoon, and often does not stir in the morning till late. Besides, 

 it retires to rest for every shower, and does not move at all in wet 

 days. When one reflects on the state of this strange being, it in a 

 matter of wonder to find that Providence should bestow such a i mi- 

 fusion of days, such a seeming waste of longevity, on a reptile that 

 appears to relish it so little as to squander more than two-thirds of its 

 existence in a joyless stupor, and be lost to all sensation for months 

 together in the profoundest of slumbers. 



" While I was writing this letter a moist and warm afternoon, with 

 the thermometer at 50, brought forth troops of shell-snails; ami, at 

 the same juncture, the tortoise heaved up the mould and put . 

 head; and the next morning came forth, as it were raised from the 

 dead, and walked about till four in the afternoon. This was a curious 

 coincidence a very amusing occurrence to see such a similarity of 

 feeling between the two q*ftuutM for so the Greeks call the shell- 

 snail and the tortoise." 



Again White reverts to the " old family tortoise " in the same 

 letter : " Because we call this creature an abject reptile, we are too 

 apt to undervalue his abilities ami depreciate his powers of in 

 Yet he is, as Mr. Pope says of his lord, 



much too vise to walk into t well ; ' 



and has so much discernment as not to fall down an halm, Imt t 

 .-iml withdraw from the brink with the readiest precaution. Though 

 he loves warm weather, he avoids the hot sun, because his thick shell, 

 when once heated, would, as the poet says of solid armour. ' scald 

 with safety.' He therefore spends the more sultry hours under the 

 umbrella of a large cabbage-leaf, or amidst the waving forests of an 

 asparagus-bed. But as he avoids heat in the summer, so, in the de. 'line 

 of the year, he improves the faint autumnal beams by getting within 

 the reflection of a fruit-wall; and though he never has read that 

 planes inclining to the horizon receive a greater share of warmth, he 

 inclines his shell by tilting it against the wall, to collect aud admit 

 every feeble ray. Pitiable seems the condition of this poor embar- 

 rassed reptile : to be cased in a suit of ponderous armour which he 

 cannot lay aside ; to be imprisoned, as it were, within his own shell, 

 must preclude, we should suppose, all activity and disposition for 

 enterprise. Yet there is a season of the year (usually the beginning 

 of June) when his exertions are remarkable. He then walks on tiptoe, 

 and is stirring by five iu the morning ; and, traversing the garden, 



